Obtaining an ERC Starting Grant*

The European Research Council (ERC) is the continent's pre-eminent source of competitive funding to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields. The ERC was designed by researchers and its funding decisions are made by disciplinary peers on 'bottom-up' proposals solely on the basis of scientific excellence. Grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers who are working or moving to work in Europe.

In 2014, I discovered that the scattering of energetic electrons can cause silicon impurities to move through the graphene lattice, revealing a potential for atomically precise manipulation using the focused electron probe. In this talk, I will describe my journey from designing a high-risk, high-reward frontier research project to writing a successful proposal and presenting it to my peers in a grant interview. The generous support of 1.5 million euros over five years allowed me to start my own research group devoted to this topic, and directly contributed to the tenure track position I received at the University of Vienna in 2019.